During the first ten minutes of class, write a summary of your reading from John Medina’s Brain Rules, Stress in your notebook. Before our next class, post a comment to this blog post containing your typed and revised summary.
ENG1101 D371 English Composition I, SPR2015
Official site for ENG1101 D371
In the chapter “Stress” by John Medina it talks about when a person is under a lot of stress he/she can not cooperate very well. It is very hard for them to learn and comprehend what is going on around them. Medina used a flight instructor’s student as an example because the student excelled in her academics and was very smart but her instructor was not having a good day and yelled at her which caused to feel like she was doing something wrong and she started to stress out. So, she started to mess up and make a lot of errors on how to fly the plane. Medina also explains how the body sometimes can not handle too much stress for long periods of time. That’s why the flight instructor’s student experienced stress and it made her scared to go back to the same cockpit where her instructor yelled at her. However, there are many ways to overcome your stress the chapter mentioned counseling as a good way to reverse all the negative effects that caused all your stress and to talk about where did all your stress came from. I personally deal with stress by writing down all my problem in a notebook and eventually turning it into poetry. It helps me to keep my mind off a lot things and keeps me calm through many situations.
According to the chapter stress, by John Medina, emotional stress has a major effect on the people and the society. It negatively affects everyone. For someone who goes to school, it makes them unfocused and makes them have bad grades. For someone who goes to work, it makes them angry, unfocused and even loses their job. All those stress happen when you cannot find a solution to a problem and you feel helpless. Stress is one of the main reasons why people quit on things or some people even kill themselves or others. I often get stress out because of all those college work, but I always tell myself it is for my own good so I go swimming to relax my mind.
After reading “Brain Rules: Stress” by John Medina, I’ve learned the many different ways stress can cause a negative affect on your body and life. Some of those ways Medina explained in the chapter were how stress can affect the immune system. It can cause your white blood cells to fight it off. However, chronic stress can kill white blood cells and leave your body more vulnerable to infections. Your immune system will not be able to respond if your are undergoing chromic stress because there are not a lot of immune cells. Chronic stress can also affect your brain. The stress hormone, cortisol, can gain access to your central nervous system and affect the hippocampus cell in your brain. It would affect learning abilities and memory. Medina mentions in the chapter that enough BDNF in the hippocampus can help suppress the damage of chronic stress. According to the chapter, BDNF keeps the neurons alive and grow in the presence of hostile action. Personally, I stress easily and I experience chronic stress more than acute stress. When I am undergoing chronic stress, I shut down and isolate myself from everyone because I don’t know how to control it. If I am in an acute stress I may listen to music or go to sleep. This chapter informed me greatly on what happens when I am undergoing chronic stress. I have realized what I am doing to my body and brain and figured out ways I can prevent prolonged chronic stress.
After reading John Medina’s “Brain Rules”, I’ve found the stress chapter to be very interesting because I found out that our brain is built to deal with stress that lasts about 30 seconds and that it is not designed for long term stress when you feel like you have no control. What I’ve also found interesting is that stress damages our cognition, our memory and the way we function. I had no clue that when we’re stressed out it affects our immune system. Stress could kill off our white blood cells making us more likely to become sick easily or catch infections. We only have one brain so we must take care of it the best we can and remember to let the little things go that are irrelevant.
Stress I call it the silent assassin aka the motivator. I knew a lot of people that had bleeding ulcers from it. The way John Medina explains it ,is magnificent. I totally agree with the three aspects he describes from the researches Jeansok Kim and David Diamond. The three ways they described stress or the ways they were able to different between stress and pleasure. There must be an reaction to the stress and it must be measurable by a third party. Second,you must have a sense to avoid it,if you had the choice. and lastly you must not feel in control of the stress.
I can relate to all three aspects ,especially dealing with prison.
The chapter sleep talks about how stress works, and the different kinds of stress. Medina explains how stress doesn’t have to be bad or good. Your mind determines if the situation currently stresses your body like skydiving for example, it doesn’t have to be stressful, it’s how you perceive sky diving is. Bad stress can affect your brain thru many means, you can actually break down from overwhelming stress. Some stress are good for you, it makes your mind work to fight the stress and makes you more active one way or another. Some of my stress management skills are taking long walks, coding websites, listening to music, occasional videogames and spending time with my partner.
In John Medina’s, “Brain Rules,” Medina discusses stress and how it hinders our learning capabilities which brings us to “Brain Rule #4, Stress: Stressed brains don’t learn the same way.” Stress differs from one person to the next. So what is stress? If you physically showed your emotion- crying, yelling, screaming- tried to leave a situation and felt a loss of control all at the same time, then you were stressed as define by researchers. Our bodies were built for stress but in small amounts. Biologically, stress is good for us. Stress responses are mainly designed to get us quick on our feet and out of danger. Under stress, our bodies produces the hormones adrenaline and cortisol. Adrenaline builds up lumps called plaque. Plaque can block the blood vessels in the brain, which can cause a stroke or of your heart and cause a heart attack. Cortisol harms the cells in the brain and hinders your memory and ability to learn. The number one stressor that impacts our community is emotional stress. The way I like to handle stress is by working out, listening to music or sleeping on it.
Human beings,more specifically their brains can be under stress, a lingering thought about an event or mistake or something due for school Will call stress. I can relate to people who experience constant stress, if you were to ask me if I was under stress nine times out of 10 I would say yes. As a college student and person in general I am under stress. A person who is under stress will suffer for a time, then set person will learn to cope. If stimuli is involved, the person will be suffering and unable to escape the stresses here she is experiencing. People will have a physiological response under the right conditions. People must try to avoid or mitigate stress if they think it will bother them. The thing with stress is the fact that it affects everyone, every person has a little stress. To think about what causes stress will be like taking a bucket of water to an inferno to attempt to put it out. Stress is almost unavoidable, I have still not figured out what stress I have my Life besides the usual suspects, college and life.
Brain rule number four is stress and how it affects the brain. According to Medina there are three factors; measurable physiological response, a desire to avoid the situation, and a loss of control. These things trigger helplessness creating a good type of stress because the brain needs a little bit of stress. If we build too much stress it could affect our immune system, our cardiovascular system and our learning ability. However, there are cases where some people can handle stress better than others. Another factor Medina brings into light is a lot of stress comes right from your home. Parents nagging at children, parents fighting in front of children, a child “holding” in a problem they have is how children build up stress and affects their learning ability. As mention before, if stress builds up too much it affects the brain. It affects the hippocampus, the part that holds or controls our memory. It makes the cortisol receptors within the brain to respond thus causing the brain not to concentrate. Medina also mentions one way to handle stress and that is exercise. Exercise will build up BDNF and help release some of that stress.
This chapter was about stress, and how it is very bad for the brain. Humans are used to responding only to short-term stress. Dealing with long-term stress can have effects such as depression, loss of sleep, and trouble functioning. Stress is an especially important factor in children. Stress, while it can happen at school and work, starts at home. A stable stress-free environment at home is important for a productive school and work environment. Stress, in itself, is a downwards spiral for anyone, although children are more susceptible to it. Ways to manage stress are exercising and avoiding the object of stress all together. Stress affects our minds, bodies, health, and blocks our cognitive thinking skills. Too much stress causes tears our arteries and can cause stroke and heart failure. It also weakens our immune systems.
There are many types of stress you can face and for many number of reasons. Some are caused by studies for students, family problems, the grades you get at school, or many more! Stress doesn’t only effect your brain but it also effects your studies, and the way you are at workplace. In John Medinas book “Brain Rules” he mentions that the worst kind of stress is the type of stress you can’t do anything about, in which you feel helpless and I agree with him. Whenever we are stressed we would try to calm ourselves down by doing many things either watch movies, listen to music or even pray. Just so we can relax our brains and look at what are our options for the solution, but what if even you don’t figure out the solution then? You would feel helpless and stress has caused many people to give up their lives. Not only that but it is dangerous for your health as well. Under chronic stress, adrenaline creates scars in your blood vessels that can cause a heart attack or stroke, and cortical damages the cells of the hippo-campus, crippling your ability to learn and remember.